Weekly Intelligence Notes (WINs)
are commentaries on Intelligence and related national security matters,
based on open media sources, selected, interpreted, edited and produced
by AFIO for non-profit educational uses by AFIO members and WIN
subscribers. Adm Don Harvey and Gene
Poteat contributed to this issue.

CONTENTS of this WIN

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ON RECENT CLAIMS OF
FAULTY INTELLIGENCE: "To understand a difficult topic
like Iraq takes patience and care. Unfortunately, you rarely hear a
patient, careful -- or thoughtful -- discussion of intelligence these
days. But these times demand it. Because the
alternative -- politicized, haphazard evaluation, without the benefit of
time and facts -- may well result in an intelligence community that is
damaged, and a country that is more at risk."

ON NATURE OF
INTELLIGENCE PROCESS: "…a few words about
intelligence collection and analysis -- how they actually happen in the
real world. This context is completely missing from the current public
debate. By definition, intelligence deals with the unclear, the
unknown, the deliberately hidden. What the
enemies of the United States hope to deny, we work to reveal. The
question being asked about Iraq in the starkest of terms is: were we
“right” or were we “wrong.” In the intelligence business, you are almost
never completely wrong or completely right."

ON HISTORICAL BASIS OF
WMD ASSESSMENT: "Everyone
knew that Iraq had chemical and biological weapons in the 1980s and
1990s. Saddam Hussein used chemical weapons against Iran and his own
people on at least 10 different occasions. He launched missiles against
Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Israel. And we couldn’t forget that in the
early 1990s, we saw that Iraq was just a few years way from a nuclear
weapon -- this was no theoretical program. It turned out that we and the
other intelligence services of the world had significantly
underestimated his progress. And, finally, we could not forget that
Iraq lied repeatedly about its unconventional weapons. So, to conclude
before the war that Saddam had no interest in rebuilding his
WMD programs, we would have had to ignore
his long and brutal history of using them."

"For years the
UN searched unsuccessfully for Saddam’s Biological Weapons program. His
son-in-law, Husayn
Kamil, who controlled the hidden program
defected, and only then was the world able to confirm that Iraq
indeed had an active and dangerous biological weapons program. Indeed,
history matters in dealing with these complicated problems. While many
of us want instant answers, this search for Biological Weapons in Iraq
will take time and patience."

"We made two
judgments that get overlooked these days -- We said Saddam did not have
a nuclear weapon and, probably would have been unable to make one until
2007 to 2009."

"[The CIA
analysts]…never said there was an “imminent” threat. Rather, they
painted an objective assessment for our policymakers of a brutal
dictator who was continuing his efforts to deceive and build programs
that might constantly surprise us and threaten our interests. No one
told us what to say or how to say it."

ON INTERNAL
REEVALUATION: "I asked Dick Kerr, a former Deputy
Director of Central Intelligence, and a team of retired senior analysts
to evaluate the Estimate. Among the questions that we as a Community
must ultimately reflect on are:

·Did the history of our work,
Saddam's deception and denial, his lack of compliance with the
international community, and all that we know about this regime cause us
to minimize, or ignore, alternative scenarios?

·Did the fact that we missed how
close Saddam came to acquiring a nuclear weapon in the early 1990s cause
us to over-estimate his nuclear or other programs in 2002?

·Did we carefully consider the
absence of information flowing from a repressive and intimidating
regime, and would it have made any difference in our bottom line
judgments?

·Did we clearly tell policy makers what we knew, what we
didn’t know, what was not clear, and identify the gaps in our knowledge?

We are in the
process of evaluating just such questions - and while others will
express views on the questions sooner, we ourselves must come to our own
bottom lines."

ON CLAIMS OF
HUMINT DEFICIENCIES: "To
be sure, we had difficulty penetrating the Iraqi regime with human
sources, but a blanket indictment of our human intelligence around the
world is simply wrong. We have spent the last seven years
rebuilding our clandestine service. As Director of Central
Intelligence, this has been my highest priority. When I came to the CIA
in the mid-90s our graduating class of case officers was unbelievably
low. Now, after years of rebuilding our training programs and putting
our best efforts to recruit the most talented men and women, we are
graduating more clandestine officers than at any time in CIA’s history.
It will take an additional five years to finish the job of rebuilding
our clandestine service, but the results so far have been obvious:

·A CIA spy led us to Khalid
Sheik Muhammad, the mastermind of Al Qa'ida’s
September 11th attacks.

·Al Qa'ida’s operational chief
in the Persian Gulf, Nashiri the man who
planned an executed the bombing of the USS COLE – was located and
arrested based on our human reporting.

·Human sources were critical to the capture of
Hambali, the chief terrorist in South Asia.
His organization killed hundreds of people when they bombed a nightclub
in Bali.

So when you
hear pundits say that we have no human intelligence capability … they
don’t know what they are talking about."

ON IRAN AND NORTH
KOREA: "Let me briefly mention Iran. I cannot go
into detail. I want to assure you that recent Iranian admissions about
their nuclear programs validate our intelligence assessments. It is
flat wrong to say that we were “surprised” by reports from the Iranian
opposition last year.

And on North
Korea, it was patient analysis of difficult-to-obtain information that
allowed our diplomats to confront the North Korean regime about their
pursuit of a different route to a nuclear weapon that violated
international agreements."

ON INTELLIGENCE
PROFESSION TODAY: "[Americans]…are served by
dedicated, courageous [intelligence] professionals. It is evident on
the battlefields of Afghanistan and Iraq. It is evident by their work
against proliferators. And it is evident by the fact that well over two
thirds of al-Qa'ida's leaders can no longer
hurt the American people. We are a community that some thought would
not be needed at the end of the Cold War. We have systematically been
rebuilding all of our disciplines with a focused strategy and care. Our
strategy for the future is based on achieving capabilities that will
provide the kind of intelligence the country deserves. … And at no time,
will we allow our integrity or our willingness to make the tough calls
be compromised."

NEW YORK TIMES VIEWS
SPEECH AS ADMISSION OF ERROR TO PRE-EMPT CRITICISM:
"George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence, acknowledged for
the first time on Thursday that American spy agencies may have
overestimated Iraq's illicit weapons capacities, in part because of a
failure to penetrate the inner workings of the Iraqi government. …In an
address at Georgetown University, Mr. Tenet presented a steadfast
defense of American spy agencies and their integrity. The speech was the
first attempt by Mr. Tenet to provide a comprehensive accounting of the
gaps between prewar intelligence on Iraq and what has been found on the
ground there, which critics have called a major intelligence failure." [from
"Tenet Concedes Gaps in C.I.A. Data on Iraq
Weapons" by by Douglas
Jehl, NYT 6Feb04] [viaCJLaC]
See full story at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/06/politics/06TENE.html?th=&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1076058620-04HcpnhLOeoUmibCYkGSgQ

OVER-BUDGET RECON SATELLITE MAY SLIP MORE -- In
public remarks last September when a Defense Science Board audit report
on the "Future Imagery Architecture" (FIA)
project was released, the NRO Director
acknowledged that the recon satellite program was "underfunded"
and "underscoped." Last month the usual
"senior government officials" said the building of the next generation
of recon satellites, with an original budget set at about $6 billion,
was requiring an estimated $4 billion more because the program was
behind schedule and over budget. The Boeing program's problems had been
no secret as the Senate Select Committee for Intelligence had last
summer blamed both the contractor and the program office for flaws
including "mismanagement and poor planning"
in addition to Boeing's inexperience problems of working in a new area.
The planned new generation is to rely on smaller, more numerous and
cheaper birds than the current group of about half a dozen large
expensive satellites.

Although the
NRO has had to scale back its expectations
for the satellites' initial performance to well below what Boeing had
promised, government officials and private "experts" have expressed
concern the new generation will not be ready in time to take over when
the current group begins to deteriorate. Several anonymous senior
officials have said they thought there was still no more than a 50-50
chance that Boeing would meet its new scaled-back goal of initial launch
in 2006.

It appears that
FIA is another of those satellite programs
that are too important and too necessary to abandon when they begin to
slip and overrun. Since the future threats are likely to evolve almost
anywhere on the globe, the need to provide recon coverage of
widely-separated areas on unpredictable schedules probably dictates the
necessity to proceed with the new approach regardless of the pain.

[Harvey / NYT
4Dec03 by Douglas Jehl]

NEW IRAQI INTELLIGENCE SERVICE FORMING -- Iraqi
and American officials have announced that a new Iraqi intelligence
service is in the process of being formed. The CIA will be taking the
lead in the evolution for the Americans with the FBI possibly helping
out with the training. Many of the new intelligence agents will be
trained outside Iraq, primarily in Jordan and Egypt. The service will
employ 500 to 2,000 people and is expected to be formed in the next
several months. Within Iraq, the lead seems to be with the Iraqi
National Accord whose leader, IyadAlawi, heads the Governing Council's
security committee and who met with the DCI
in Langley in December. Ibrahim al-Janabi,
a senior member of the Iraqi Governing Council's security committee, is
a leading candidate to head the new service. Addressing the touchy
point of how many of the new agents will come from the security forces
under Hussein, al-Janabi said that fewer
than five percent would be recruited from the
Mukhabarat and the other security forces, and they would be
vetted to weed out any guilty of human rights crimes. As currently
planned, the service will fall under the Ministry of the Interior, which
supervises many of the new security forces in
Iraq, including the police and the border patrol. Al-Janabi
said there was "nothing official" in the way of financing coming from
the CIA, but the article goes on to speculate that America probably will
provide some money. Many of the agents will work in the border towns of
Iraq to identify foreign fighters who have slipped into the country and
will monitor their activities. A spokesman for the Ministry of the
Interior noted that securing the borders is crucial because "there are
indications of foreign intelligence activity and attempts to infiltrate
Iraqi institutions." The number of foreign terrorists in Iraq is
unknown, but al-Janabi estimated there are
up to 5,000 with less than a fifth of those carrying out operations with
the remainder involved in financing, recruiting and other logistical
activities. The American estimate is 3,000 to 5,000 guerrilla fighters
in Iraq, with 5 to 10 percent of those coming from outside the country.

The formation of the
intelligence service is a highly sensitive matter in light of the deadly
history of Hussein's secret security forces. At least according to the
reporter, it is also controversial within the Governing Council between
factions with strongly differing views on
the advisability of recruiting any former Hussein intelligence people.
It is possible that the contending views are a reflection of the Iraqi
groups inherent disagreements and also
differing approaches within American officialdom. While the reporter
cited two officials as sources for the bulk of the story, he did not
source the sentence: "The American government secretly contributes to
several intelligence services in the Islamic world with which it has
close ties, including those in Jordan, Egypt, Pakistan and Algeria." It
is interesting (and not curious) that a media report identifying a
covert American female agent residing in the US has caused a huge
media/one political party uproar while this identification of secret
contributions and close ties to four Moslem intelligence agencies evokes
no heartburn.

DON'T GET CAUGHT BY "PHISHING"
-- (v.) Pronounced “fishing,” the
act of sending an e-mail to a user falsely claiming to be an established
legitimate enterprise in an attempt to scam the user into surrendering
private information that will be used for identity theft. The
e-mail directs the user to visit a website where they are asked to
update personal information, such as passwords and credit card, social
security, and bank account numbers, that the
legitimate organization already has. The website, however, is bogus and
set up only to steal the user’s information. For example, 2003 saw the
proliferation of a phishing scam in which
users received e-mails supposedly from eBay claiming that the user’s
account was about to be suspended unless he clicked on the provided link
and updated the credit card information that the genuine eBay already
had. Because it is relatively simple to make a Web site look like a
legitimate organizations site by mimicking the HTML code, the scam
counted on people being tricked into thinking they were actually being
contacted by eBay and were subsequently going to eBay’s site to update
their account information. By spamming large groups of people, the “phisher”
counted on the e-mail being read by a percentage of people who actually
had listed credit card numbers with eBay legitimately.

Phishing,
also referred to as brand spoofing or carding, is a variation on
“fishing,” the idea being that bait is thrown out with the hopes that
while most will ignore the bait, some will be tempted into biting. -- definition from
http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/p/phishing.html

VERIFY WEBSITE PAGES BEFORE ENTERING PERSONAL INFO-- Even tech-savvy users
could be fooled by the latest phishing
scams, which have evolved beyond all recognition in their bid to steal
credit card details, says an anti-phishing
organization. Phishing attacks are reaching
a point of sophistication where even the most Internet-savvy user could
be fooled, said the Anti-Phishing Working
Group (APWG) on Wednesday. ["Phishing"
involves creating emails that request info from a place you already do
busines with, and often have a link that
takes you to what looks like that firm's website…luring unsuspecting
consumers to what appears to be a corporate web site designed to capture
information such as your SSN number, credit
card number or bank account number] [RLevine/Newsbits,
5Feb04]

ARMY OFFICIALS UP IN ARMS OVER FAS WEB SITE-- The U.S. Army has
apologized for threatening to prosecute this open-government advocacy
group after it republished a document copied from a military website. An
official with the U.S. Army Services and Operations Agency on Wednesday
accused the Federation of American Scientists (FAS)
of publishing a secret government document about acquiring military
hardware--before backing down a few hours later when it was clear the
document was unclassified and well-distributed throughout the
Internet. [SecrecyNews,
Aftergood, 5Feb04]
Also see:
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105_2-5154210.html

PENTAGON SCRAPS INTERNET VOTING SYSTEM -- We
reported on this plan in the prior WIN, and the outcry its announcement
had triggered by computer security experts stating that the system was
fraught with holes. The Pentagon apparently listened..
Citing security concerns, the Pentagon has canceled Internet voting that
would have involved as many as 100,000 military and overseas citizens
from seven states in November, a Defense Department official said
Thursday. [RLevine/Newsbits, 5Feb04]

[IMPORTANT:
AFIO does not "vet" or endorse these inquiries or offers.
Reasonable-sounding inquiries and career offerings are published as a
service to our members, and for researchers, educators, and subscribers.
You are urged to exercise your usual caution and good judgment when
responding or supplying any information. Lately however, AFIO has been
receiving an unusually large number of requests for job postings. As a
result, we will be -- temporarily -- expanding our "Employment
Opportunities" section. Additionally, so that AFIO may better ascertain
the viability of this service, we would ask that members referred to or
hired for any of these postings mention AFIO as the original referring
entity.]

Ability to take polygraph examination and
maintain a Top Secret/SCI with Lifestyle Polygraph Clearance (U.S.
Citizen and Immediate Family (brothers, sisters, wife, children)

Job Description:
A senior computational linguist to work on intelligent document
management products. Experience in programming statistical text
processing or text parsing using C or C++ programming skills are
required. Candidates with a Masters Ph.D. (preferred) in Computer
Science or linguistics and 3+ years work experience are preferred.

Job Qualifications:
Degree in computational linguistics with emphasis on lexicography.
Knowledge extraction and morphological analysis.Experience with development of commercial software
products.Experience with research in
computational linguistics. Strong programming skills five years
required. Familiarity with a large number of
languages (preferably Middle Eastern/Asian) Familiarity with the
analysis of large corporations.5+ years of
experience in the field of computational linguistics.Active participation in the community of
computational linguistics.Familiarity with
C/C++, Perl, Windows NT operating system,
compression algorithm helpful. Send Resumes to
resumes@unitedplacements.com

DO YOU KNOW ABOUT CODE SECURITY LESSONS - RE. LESLIE HOWARD, GERMANS,
and CHURCHILL"In August 2003 a research inquiry in
a WIN received an encouraging response from three former intelligence
officers who worked in the AEC, CIA and
Naval Intelligence and who were briefed during the years 1949-1958;
their code/cipher security briefers gave
them each similar versions of the following 'code security lesson
story', wherein it was suggested that the 1 June 1943 civil airliner
flight (777A) of actor Leslie Howard on his return from neutral Portugal
was shot down, though through ULTRA intelligence authorities could have
warned, diverted or stopped the flight. To safeguard the ULTRA secret,
the security lesson claimed, Flight 777A (BOAC/KLM)
was not warned. Included in variations of the 'lesson' was the
suggestion that the Germans believed Churchill might have been on that
flight. Yet again I am seeking testimonies or memories of other
intelligence personnel who were instructed with a version of this
'lesson' or heard of it and I would like to discover if we can confirm
any names of former instructors and identify any documents which could
clarify this incident's circumstances. Thank you for your assistance."
Replies to Douglas Wheeler, Professor Emeritus of History, University of
NH, Durham; e-mail:
DougWheeler2@aol.com or via U.S. mail to 27 Mill Rd, Durham NH
03824-3006 or by phone (603) 868-9633.

HELP ON BIOGRAPHY OF WILLIAM MORGAN -- "AranShetterly of Brooksville, Maine (aranshetterly@hotmail.com
) is working on a biography of William Morgan, a U.S. citizen born in
Cleveland OH on 19 April 1928, who became embroiled in revolutionary and
counter-revolutionary activity in Cuba during the period 1958-61,
ultimately being executed by the Castro regime in March 1961.
Aran would welcome an opportunity to
interview anyone who might have perspective on the case of this person
who allegedly had ties to U.S. intelligence. AranShetterly is a friend and neighbor of AFIO
member Bob Sargent(
sargent@prexar.com ). Anyone having knowledge of the Morgan case
and willing to talk with Aran could contact
him directly via e-mail or phone (207-829-6201). One also might channel
perspective on the Morgan case to Aran via
Bob Sargent who would source only to a
knowledgeable AFIO member."

NOVELIST SEEKS BLURBS FROM INTEL PROS --JonarNader,
author of several bestsellers, based in Sydney, Australia writes: "I am
trying to contact former or current agents of the FBI, CIA, MI5, and MI6
or similar intelligence organisations,
including the KGB and Mossad. One of my
previous books is called ‘How to Lose Friends and Infuriate Your Boss’.
This is a serious publication, and on the front cover is a comment from
the current Chief of The Australian Defence
Force, General Peter Cosgrove AC MC. More about my
books and company at
www.Logictivity.com.

"I am now working on a new
action thriller novel that is original and suspenseful. I have had
‘in-principle’ agreements from several prominent intelligence officials
and defence personnel. They will provide me
with comments for my next cover because they, like
IOs, are at the forefront of world and national affairs, and they
would understand the important messages that are in my book. The book
lends itself to approximately 10 other comments from current and former
chiefs, officers, or agents, and I wondered if AFIO members would be
willing to read the book, or a detailed synopsis of it, or discuss
aspects of it with me. Then, if appropriate, those individuals would be
invited to write a very short comment or reaction or opinion about the
storyline or its philosophy or impact on our world. The novel is a
commercial action thriller. However, I am a philosopher and educator,
and the novel is designed to be thought-provoking. It involves a secret
service organization, even though it does not name it, and even though
the story is not about the secret service. If you feel that this might
interest you or your colleagues, I would be pleased to correspond with
you. Replies & Inquiries to: [No
further responses are needed. The matter has been closed.
Thank you for your strong replies to this inquiry].

Leaders and Their
Followers in a Dangerous World: The Psychology of Political Behavior
(Cornell University Press, April 04, $29.95) by Jerrold M. Post,
Professor of Psychiatry, Political Psychology and International Affairs
and Director of the Political Psychology Program at
The George Washington University. This former 21-year CIA
psychiatrist evaluates such leaders as Osama
bin Laden and Fidel Castro.

Getting Away with
Murder: The Real Story Behind American Taliban John Walker
Lindh and What the U.S. Government Had to
Hide (Arcade Books, April 04, $25) by Richard D.
Mahoney investigates the death of CIA Covert Ops Officer Mike Spann and
the case of the "American Taliban."

Dark Victory: America's
Second War Against Iraq
(Naval Institute Press, April 04, $24.95) by Jeffrey Record. This
national security analyst critiques the origin, objectives and
consequences of the U.S. war against Iraq.

A War of a Different
Kind: Military Force and America's Search for Homeland Security
(Naval Institute Press, April 04 $32.95) by Stephen M. Duncan. Duncan, a
former Pentagon official, draws on a lifetime of military and legal
experience to evaluate the role of the armed forces in homeland
security.

Imperial Hubris: Why
the West Is Losing the War on Terror (Brassey's,
May 04, $27.50) by Anonymous. An unnamed member of the U.S. intelligence
community claims that we are losing the war on terror, and explains why.

Enigma: How the Poles
Broke the Nazi Code (Hippocrene
Books, March 03, $22.50) by WladyslawKozaczuk and JerzyStraszak offers a history of the Polish
solution to the German cipher and its use by French and British
intelligence.

Inside Al
Qaeda: How I Infiltrated the World's
Deadliest Terrorist Organization (Thunder's Mouth
Press, April 04, $13.95) by Mohamed Sifaoui
is the diary of an undercover journalist.

Shadow Divers: How Two
Americans Discovered Hitler's Lost Sub and Solved One of the Last
Mysteries of World War II (Random House, July 04,
$26.95) by Robert Kurson. A sunken German
U-boat is discovered off the coast of New Jersey in 1991.

MAKE THIS ELEGANT CLUB YOUR WASHINGTON BASE --DACOR (Diplomatic and Consular Officers,
Retired) welcomes membership applications from retired or current
officers of federal agencies whose principal focus is foreign affairs.
Members can use the historic DACOR Bacon
House at 1801 F Street, N.W., located a short walk from the State
Department, the White House, the World Bank, and metro. Bacon House is a
magnificent Federal-style building, dating back to 1825 that provides a
convenient venue to meet friends and colleagues.
DACOR offers members a rich program of luncheons, lectures,
receptions, and cultural events. It provides an attractive and
affordable place for members to host private social events. And it
offers overnight accommodations at reasonable rates.
DACOR is open to retired, former and active
duty members of the Foreign Service, Commerce, USTR,
CIA, DIA and other federal agencies
concerned with international relations. Membership applications can be
found at the DACOR web site
www.dacorbacon.org.

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